V$RESOURCE_LIMIT

This view displays information about global resource use for some of the system resources. Use this view to monitor the consumption of resources so that you can take corrective action, if necessary. Many of the resources correspond to initialization parameters listed in Table 5-3.

Some resources, those used by DLM for example, have an initial allocation (soft limit), and the hard limit, which is theoretically infinite (although in practice it is limited by SGA size). During SGA reservation/initialization, a place is reserved in SGA for the INITIAL_ALLOCATION of resources, but if this allocation is exceeded, additional resources are allocated up to the value indicated by LIMIT_VALUE. The CURRENT_UTILIZATION column indicates whether the initial allocation has been exceeded. When the initial allocation value is exceeded, the additional required resources are allocated from the shared pool, where they must compete for space with other resources.

A good choice for the value of INITIAL_ALLOCATION will avoid the contention for space. For most resources, the value for INITIAL_ALLOCATION is the same as the LIMIT_VALUE. Exceeding LIMIT_VALUE results in an error.